Zoe

I spent far too long wondering why someone would collect bookmarks just to read them instead of the books they are placed in

Australian here, the only people I have interacted with IRL who Ive talked about it with are members of my political party (we are socialists). It has been a mix of positivity and questioning how or if it will actually change anything or lead more people to joining the movement. It has certainly lead to a lot of online discourse but whether it will lead to any real movement building or change is yet to be seen. There is also the question of how useful individual acts of violence are when there isn’t a mass movement behind them. I have also seen people calling the shooter hot and such. There is no sympathy at all for the CEO and the people I have talked with all think he had it coming

So your issue is that owning a house is too expensive because housing is artificially scarce but you don’t think that privately owned investment properties is the fault of that? Renting will always cost more than the upkeep of a house because otherwise nobody would lease. The only reasons housing prices changing is a worry to homeowners is because housing is artificially scarce and the artificial scarcity changes based on how much of the artificially scarce housing investors decide to put on the market. All your issues with personal ownership of a house stem from other people treating housing as private property that can be invested in.

I lost my original comment I was typing as my device died so I’ll keep it short. Your aunt extracts money from people on the basis of owning private property (private property is property that is owned by an individual for non-personal use). She doesn’t earn the money through her own labour, she gets it by owning an asset that she herself has no use for and someone else needs and charges that person for using it. This is a parasitic relationship. Now to answer your question about if she is a bad person because of it, I would say not necessarily. The fact that landlords exist is a bad thing. We live in a system however where investment in private property (something inherently parasitic) is often the only way to retire. Every working Australian is required by law to invest a portion of their pay into an investment fund. This too is parasitic. That doesn’t however make every working Australian a bad person, they are just working within the system and doing what is required of them to live. Another thing to keep in mind is that for every house that is owned as an investment property, the price to buy a house goes up. By being a landlord, you make it harder for others to own a home.

I learn something new about the American dialect everyday. Thanks

One more question because this is honestly baffling to me: Is gnocchi also noodles in the US? How about ravioli? And what about pierogi and other dumplings?

Are you serious? “pasta”, “lasagna sheet”, “lasagna”. Literally anything that isn’t a completely different shape. Hell, calling it “lasagna paper” makes more sense than calling it a noodle… Do you yanks have the term “noodle shaped”? If you do how do you grapple with that and calling pasta of completely different shapes “noodles”? Is this a pool noodle in the US? A lasagna sheet is as far as you could possibly get from a noodle when it comes to carbohydrate food items.

“sheet of lasagna noodle” I’m sorry but what did you just call it? I can understand calling spaghetti a noodle, at least it is noodle shaped but lasagna sheets!?

I wonder what this will mean for the kurds? I am hoping that HTS remains true to their words about religious and ethnic minorities. Mazloum Abdi of the SDF at least seems hopeful for an opportunity to build a democratic and just Syria. Im not holding my breath though, it is a very rapidly changing situation and we’ll just have to wait and see

The amount of negativity on that thread alone is enough for me to realise that bluesky is not for me. I enjoy the positivity I find on the fedi and decided I wouldn’t use a platform that algorithmically rewards negativity when I was harassed off facebook. I am glad that others are finding it nicer than twitter but for me it seems much the same but without Elon Musk

They would serve a greater use to humanity as compost

My top 3: EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo